Three of Statoil's four ports in Scandinavia set records for the number of ship calls made at them in 1999.
One of the three – Mongstad near Bergen – also set a record for the volume of both crude oil and refined products exported, at almost 500 million barrels and 9.5 million tonnes respectively.
While Mongstad, Kårstø north of Stavanger and Tjeldbergodden in mid-Norway all had more ship calls, the Kalundborg refinery's port in Denmark saw a reduction in such visits of just over 100 to 798.
A total of 1,930 ship calls were made at the Port of Mongstad in 1999 as against 1,851 the year before. The 1999 figure includes 464 calls by extra large crude carriers.
These figures confirm Mongstad's position as Norway's largest and Europe's second-biggest oil port in tonnage terms.
"And the early part of the new year has been just as busy as the end of the old," reports Øyvind Øverland, who keeps statistics of volumes shipped and vessel calls.
The number of ship calls at Kårstø has increased steadily every year since 1994, when it stood at 356, to 431 in 1999. Last year's exports from the processing complex included propane, naphtha, iso and normal butane and condensate.
And the total volume exported, at just over seven million tonnes, was only 98,000 tonnes below the peak figure achieved in 1997.
At Statoil's Tjeldbergodden complex, 166 calls were made by ships loading methanol in 1999. This was up from 123 in 1998, the first full year of operation for the plant producing this chemical.
And just over 756,000 tonnes of methanol were exported – an increase of 42,000 from the year before.